Now, I am not interested in 3D objects, or micro-terrain elevation, but simply 2D textures, currently desert-texture is smooth. I am running ALS on, LOD and all relevant settings to the max, but I'm wondering about the smoothness of the terrain we currently have. I should state that these settings gave me much joy.

I respectfully suggest that after such 2D textures had been created that they could be drawn in immediate, short distance on front of a low flying aircraft to hopefully add to the sense of speed.My theory is; that if one had 2D "clutter" low, and passing over with an aircraft, that it might create a more "sense of speed".I hope this is a logical suggestion, I might need some input to state it in a more technically correct way.

I'm not sure about your settings or your location, but flat desert looks like this in ALS (this is the Mojave, befitting the A-10)

The finest structures generated are cm-sized - you can see them in this shot inside the flat vegetation patches. In fact, the terrain is so detailed it looks quite decent when you look at it from the walker at eye level.

This is a noon shot by the way - in lower light you can also see a gentle bump map giving the appearance of structure in the terrain.

So I'm prepared to say that the desert texturing is actually not smooth at all.

Yes, i played with the overlay transition parameter until i had the desired effect, i have to say that I'm not as familiar with procedural as you are, and i might have some values which doesn't make sense from your perspective, but it's a dirtrock_dark base with rock_brown2 overlay(transition 0.80) and some sand hires(bias -0.10), this is only a single landclass.

So, the biggest problem when you change sloped terrain textures to something prominent is that there might be other landclasses for which this is not done - which then look rather strange.

Also, the change may be wrong outside a particular reference region as you realized.

Since you're likely much more familiar with the area than you are, it's up to you how you want to proceed - your changes do look rather compelling in the pics. Just proceed with some care and also check visuals from low level and high up please.

"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up.""Why not?" said Gurder."Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."

I've stretched the base texture to cover a larger area now, and i gave it a new generic look, which makes it apply for areas with vegetation too(rather than only black volcanic), i found lower values of hires to be best especially because i see hires texture clipping from distance, i used the excellent california-shrub2 base but created my own overlay with Gimp, and I've made it gradient based.

I think these work in Mediterranean landscape and southern peninsula best, I'll let you know if i settle for a local or more generic solution, warning 56k

This will apply to the hijaz region only, I made sure all landclasses have prominent slope assigned to the same overlay texture, reverted back to desert look and more classic theme, you can decide if you find these changes good or not, i don't mind either way, you're free to make changes, i created few textures so i can provide the project files if you wish, just let me know if you or others have any feedback regarding this change, thank you.